Fear Itself
by Nechangi
Summary: Finally being able to take the cure Shinichi decides to surprise Kaitou KID by showing up and giving the thief a real challenge, but something goes wrong. The 'Jewel of Immorality' imbedded into the top frame of 'The Cursed Mirror' is said to bring out the evil in the pure-hearted, and after seeing a shadow in the reflection Shinichi can no longer separate nightmare from reality.
1. An Ancient Curse

A/N; I wrote this some time ago, but didn't upload it since I hadn't decided if I should make it to an one-shot or not.

Warnings;  
Strange english, OOCness

Genre; Suspense/Drama/Mindfuckery/Horror**  
**Rating: T, death -Imaginary, or not-  
Uploaded; 2012-09-28  
Words: 2,100**  
**

* * *

**Fear Itself  
**

* * *

**Chap.1  
An Ancient Curse**

Shinichi waved to the reporters, seeing them go mad with their cameras and trying to make their way to him, but he was inside the heist-blockade so they couldn't get to him. It was the first public appearance Kudou Shinichi had made since the takedown of the Black Organization, and no one had gotten an interview with him as of yet so the reporters were absolutely crazy.

After making his way inside Nakamori tried to yell at him, but Shinichi interrupted with questions about Kaitou KID and in the end made the inspector quiet down. The detective took control over the heist within five minutes and stationed the taskforce just like he wanted them, all the while being followed by a suspicious Hakuba, believing that he might be Kaitou KID in disguise.

* * *

Shinichi smiled and glanced to the mirror; it was only ten minutes left. His eyes travelled over the information written on a small sign beside the antique.

"'_The Cursed Mirror' is said to have been sent to the earth by the devil himself, crafted in the white flames in the first circle of hell and only works on the pure-hearted people that, by just being who they are, would go to heaven. It is said that if a person with a pure heart, the reincarnation of an angel, looks into the mirror he or she will see the evil of the world and be dragged into its depths, ultimately turning their kindness into merciless evil, creating a fallen angel, just like the devil himself." _

The detective smirked for a bit, wondering who would believe such nonsense, and then looked himself in the mirror. Shinichi raised an eyebrow and flattened out his hair a bit; the strong winds had ruffled it up and he'd been looking like that the entire time he'd been inside.  
"Aren't you afraid to get cursed?" a voice asked and Shinichi could hear the joke in Hakuba's words.  
"Not at all," Shinichi threw the reflection of the blonde a glance, "how about you? Are you the reincarnation of an angel?" Hakuba snorted amused at his question.  
"I don't believe in heaven or hell," he confessed, "this life is all there is and you better live it well so that you're remembered as a good person. I for one would love to go down in history as the greatest detective ever lived."  
"Don't all detectives want that?" Shinichi smirked and watched Hakuba leave to retake his own position. He smiled at the thought. The greatest detective ever lived; that certainly was a title he wouldn't mind carrying after his death. Shinichi returned his gaze to his own reflection and frowned as he saw a shadow quickly pass by the wall behind him and in front of the policemen. Thinking it was Kaitou KID he looked at himself one last time, seeing the image grin at him and he blinked confused; he was smiling not grinning. His reflection winked at him and then dissipated. Shinichi scowled in annoyance thinking that Kaitou KID had played a prank on him in hope that he'd get shocked.

"KID," he said as he turned around, smirking towards the floor and making the bangs cover his eyes, "you're early." The thief tensed, but then saw how the detective turned his gaze towards a dark corner so he relaxed slightly.  
"Come out and stop playing hide and seek," Shinichi demanded seeing the shadow in the corner move. Dizziness swept over him and he grabbed into his forehead, sending the taskforce a glance, and locked his gaze with indigo eyes. The thief smirked and Shinichi immediately recognized the confidence, wondering who it was that was sneaking around the heist room as his eyesight grew foggy. He glanced back to the corner, just as the taskforce member was replaced by Kaitou KID and to his horror saw himself walk out from the shadows. Everyone were focused on the thief and never noticed Shinichi's doppelganger, even most of his cold laugh was drenched in the sound of smoke and glitter bombs.

The detective threw an eye at the crowd of struggling officers, seemingly glued together and then returned his attention to the copy, but twitched back; the doppelganger was standing right in front of him, grinning at him.  
"Surprise, Shinichi," he growled and Shinichi found himself standing in an alley, like he'd woken up right then and there.

He spun around and patted himself down, making sure that all limbs were in the right place and that he hadn't broken anything. After he made sure that he was physically fine he checked the watch and sighed as he slouched against the wall; he'd lost two hours and he couldn't remember a thing.  
"Ooh, I had fun," a cold voice stated in the darkness and Shinichi immediately turned on the light on his watch, lighting up the doppelganger that was standing in front of him, "didn't you?" Shinichi scowled at him.  
"Who the hell are you? What did you do to me?" he hissed, but the copy only smiled that blood-thirsty grin that sent shivers down Shinichi's spine.  
"I'm you," he stated and walked up to the detective.  
"You're not me!" Shinichi got closer to him, "you're not even real!" To illustrate his claim the teenager swung his fist and felt how it painfully collided with the doppelganger's jaw, who crashed into a garbage can, making it spill out the litter as it fell over. Shinichi grabbed into his wrist hissing from the pain that radiated from his knuckles while the doppelganger laughed and wiped his mouth.  
"Ooh, I have a good fist," he grinned and Shinichi glared at him as he got up from the ground, massaging his abused chin, "real enough for you?"

* * *

Shinichi found himself walking down a street, carrying his hood so that his face was shadowed. He seemed to be following a young woman and a young man, having an argument. The man suddenly tensed.  
"Shit they saw us!" Shinichi's doppelganger gasped and pushed him into a bush, making them both fall into it.

The young man in the company of the woman looked around in suspicion, certain that he'd heard a sound, but ignored it as the woman smacked him over the head with her bag for not listening to what she was saying.

Shinichi struggled against the person straddling him and holding both hands over his mouth, making him unable to call out for help or to warn anyone; if the 'curse' of the mirror was true, then Shinichi wasn't dealing with a nice person. The detective scratched his attacker's face, trying to injure his eyes and pulled his hair to hold him still all the while trying to kick him off.  
"Oh my, oh my," the doppelganger grinned, "I've got a lively one."

* * *

Shinichi looked around in worry and immediately checked his watch, seeing that over six hours had gone by, so approximately eight hours from the heist started. He was standing in a small garden by someone's house, but he didn't recognize where he was. Carefully he peaked out from the gates seeing a street sign and then looked around for the creep. Shinichi quickly decided that he rather have his eyes on the copy, knowing exactly where he was, than not knowing. He made his way around the house once and then realised that the front door stood ajar. Fearing the worst he made his way inside as quietly as he could. He searched the bottom floor and the basement but found no one, so he made his way upstairs, silently checking room after room until he found the doppelganger leaning over a sleeping teenager.

A knife in his hand made Shinichi sneak up upon him and then snatch it from him. The doppelganger scowled at him, but confusingly let him have the weapon.  
"Aah!" the copy said loudly and Shinichi almost jumped out of his skin, "I can't believe that we look so much like KID!" The detective immediately placed a hand over his double's mouth and hushed him, hoping that the teenager didn't awaken, but then the doppelganger's words sunk in Shinichi stared around himself, seeing the thief's target on the bedside table.

"No way," he gasped and saw how KID stirred in his sleep, turning his face towards the detective and he found himself memorizing the face.  
"Little thieves shall be killed," the doppelganger chuckled in a muffled voice and Shinichi scowled at him, but the double only grinned as he quickly grabbed into Shinichi's hand and placed the other over his mouth. The doppelganger was stronger than him and Shinichi watched in horror how the knife entered the magician's throat and then felt how a warm spray of blood splashed onto his face. Indigo eyes opened in terror and Shinichi screamed.

* * *

"_No!_" the scream echoed through the house and Shinichi stared around himself, seeing his own room and felt how he grew confused. He desperately looked for any blood on him, but found none. He closed his eyes and remembered the heist; he'd caught KID and pinned him to the floor while all of the taskforce watched. They'd wrestled and then rolled down the stairs before he chased KID around, eventually forcing him to crush a window with his sharpened cards and jump out through it. KID had laughed loudly so Shinichi had inflated a soccer ball and kicked it at him, making him crash into the roof next to the heist building.  
"Meitantei! Too dangerous!" KID had called out from the other roof.  
"I'm only dangerous as long as you're stealing!" Shinichi had answered and with a chuckle kicked a stapler at him.  
"_No office supplies!"_ KID yelled and Shinichi went to help the taskforce get out of the traps, knowing that he had no way to get through the crowds to the other building.

Dressed in riot gear he mixed in with the rest of the taskforce and made his way home without having to answer to any questions.

* * *

"Worst nightmare ever," Shinichi sighed lightened and got up. He yawned as he walked into his bathroom and looked down at the pile of clothes. He frowned, feeling how panic started to pulse through him; that wasn't his clothes, it was the clothes from his dream. Shinichi pinched himself and then examined the clothes, wondering where the hell they'd come from, since they didn't have any blood on them.

"Mirror, mirror, on the wall," a trailing voice said slowly in cold amusement and Shinichi stared bewildered at the shower curtain when a hand grabbed into the edges of it.  
"Who's the vilest of them all?" the person continued while he leisurely pulled the curtain away in order to expose himself, and Shinichi swallowed thickly as he recognized his own voice, but it was uncharacteristically detached and hostile. The detective was prepared for a fight, but went numb from terror then the intruder yanked the curtain away and revealed himself.  
"You, my love, are vilest of all." Shinichi found himself looking into the inhumanly sadistic eyes of his own doppelganger and his duplicate grinned in pure blood-thirst as he saw Shinichi's fear.

Looking down to the floor he saw that the clothes were no longer clean; they were covered in dried blood while his hands were stained with darker spots, and he immediately dropped the clothing. He felt himself go numb from the terror, wondering what was real or not. The doppelganger laughed heartlessly and a memory of himself standing over a peacefully sleeping teenager came to him. The young man looked like him, and Shinichi recognised him as the one that had been KID in his dream, if it was a dream.

A kitchen knife in his hand reflected the moonlight through the window when he raised it and aimed at the teenager's throat. The detective remembered the blood that splattered over his face, the scratching sensation as the teenager woke and instinctively dug nails into his face and Shinichi felt nauseous; what was real? What had happened? What was dream?

Staring into the mirror he could see four long scratch marks that went from his ear to his lip, and he tried to swallow the anxiousness that created a lump in his throat, but the only thing Shinichi could do was remember how he opened the closet at the thief's home, took out a dark hoodie and pants, pulled them over his bloodstained ones, and then for some reason forced the bleeding corpse into the closet; at the time it looked like a good idea, but now all he could think about was how sick it was. He clearly remembered getting on a bus, paying with the thief's own money and then how he got home and went into the shower. Shinichi bent down over the toilet and threw up, recalling how the water had been coloured red from the blood that had been in his hair. He listened to the guffawing from his evil doppelganger as he sunk to his knees after emptying his already empty stomach.

* * *

A/N; Idea taken from show/movie (Fear Itself) that I saw in the middle of the night during the summer and I changed it a lot, but still took the basic idea of that confusing question; "What actually happened? What is real?"  
Now I actually fell asleep in the middle of the movie, so that might be why I thought that it was so confusing.


	2. Involving KID

A/N;

Warnings;  
Strange english, OOCness****

Rating: T, death -Imaginary, or not-  
Uploaded; 2012-10-15  
Words: 3,500**  
**

* * *

**Chap. 2  
Involving KID**

Shinichi trembled and didn't know what to do for a moment, so he got up and brushed his teeth, wanting to get away the taste of acid. Staring at his scratches he decided to find out if he'd killed KID since both memories were equally strong. Even though logic dictated that if he could find KID's home with the help of the street sign the end of his other 'dream' was fake, but that only proved that he followed someone, not that he killed them and the scratches could be self-induced, at least that was what he hoped.

'If I go there and find a body, I'll just call Megure-keibu,' Shinichi mused quietly to himself and sighed depressed; he didn't want to go down in history for taking down the BO, then losing his mind and killing someone.

Shinichi changed clothes and ended up in dark attire, covering his face with a large hood and the voice changing facemask, altering his voice in case one of the reporters spotted him. He made his way out the back and then climbed over the large wall, making sure that he went unnoticed as he dropped down.

Slowly he retraced his steps and in the end stood outside the door to the house that he didn't want to find three hours after his 'killing'. He pressed the handle down and gritted his teeth as he door opened. Shinichi looked around seeing the wallet from which he'd stolen money and he silently walked up the stairs with a heavy feeling. Pushing open the door to the room at the end of the corridor he felt himself go cold; blood, everywhere, spreading out from the bed. Long lines of dried blood covered the wall where the thief had slept and a drag mark went from the bed to the closet, not counting the footprints on the floor and handprints on the white closet.

Shinichi swallowed, needing to see the body and make sure that KID, or whoever lived there, hadn't been killed in any other way than what the detective remembered. He opened the door with a heavy heart and watched how the thief's body tumbled out.

* * *

If Kaito got to guess once every second for a million years how he would wake up that one day none of them would have involved waking to the noise of Kudou Shinichi digging out his entire closet on the floor.

Kaito stared bewildered at his Meitantei that, after emptying his closet, rearranged the clothes on the floor to a line and then sat by them staring. Kaito waited in silence, wondering what the detective was doing.  
"I'm so sorry, KID," he mumbled and Kaito got ready to defend himself, but before he could answer the detective continued, "I'm so sorry for killing you. I didn't mean to. He made me do it." Kaito's voice was caught in his throat and all he could do was frown.  
"No! Shut up!" Meitantei called out and pointed into thin air, making Kaito blink as he tried to follow the detective's gaze, "this is entirely your fault! No! I didn't kill him! You did!_ That doesn't matter!_"

Meitantei kept arguing with thin air until he flew up and seemed to attack it. Kaito only gaped, but when the detective began hitting himself in the stomach he'd seen enough and restrained him to the floor.  
"_Get off me you bastard! I'm gonna kill you before you do anything else!"_ Meitantei roared and tried to headbutt him.

Kaito called out to him, but that only made the detective yell louder so in the end Kaito slapped him and seemed to make his detective come back.

* * *

Shinichi looked around, seeing that the room was clean from blood and dead bodies.  
"KID?" he asked the teenage boy that sighed and released him, but he only threw his arms around him and pulled him close, "you're alive! The other world was fake! I never killed you!" Kaito smirked amused, wondering what kind of drug had made the detective hallucinate badly enough to come and find him.

"Oi! Are you okay?" the thief asked and felt how the detective shook in silent tears.  
"No, no, I'm not okay," Shinichi answered honestly, not caring if KID could hear the distress he was experiencing, "I don't know what is real or not, and the freakiest thing is that if the other world is true, then I'm hugging a corpse." Kaito raised an eyebrow and pulled away from the detective, seeing that he was staring at something above them to their left.  
"He's laughing at me," Shinichi mumbled and Kaito grew worried; whatever drug he'd ingested was affecting him badly, "he knows you're a corpse, and he thinks that it's funny." Kaito was suddenly pushed away with such force that he hit the bed and got to watch how Meitantei pulled out his phone. The detective fought his imaginary enemy and ended up with throwing the phone in the wall so hard that it shattered. He then crawled into the corner and cried loudly as he curled himself to a ball and dug his fingers into his hair.

Determined to get the detective some rest from his constant nightmare Kaito went inside the painting and retrieved a can of sleeping gas and then sprayed Meitantei with a dose. The thief clicked his tongue and changed to his KID outfit as he took up his phone. He pulled on clothes over his white suit, making sure that he looked like he normally did.  
"Jii-chan," he smiled when the sleepy old man answered, "I need you to bring the car here now, and I mean _right now_. Meitantei showed up at my house, acting like a crazy person, talking about killing me and seeing things. I'm going to venture a guess that it has something to do with the reverting-back-to-teenager-thing, so could you come and pick us up?"

* * *

Kaito sat by the detective as he slept, examining the bruises on his body and cleaned the wound on his knuckles from small chips of brick.  
"Meitantei," he mumbled and wrapped the injured hand in bandages, "did you really hit a wall? Poor you, I honestly don't know what I would've done if I believed that I had killed somebody." Kaito caressed the teenager's hair until the front door opened and a voice called out.

"Botchama!" Jii yelled into the house and yawned, hearing steps in the stairs and then getting a sight of Kaito carrying the young detective in his arms.  
"We should get him to the Haibara-girl," Kaito stated and passed the man.  
"How did he even get in?" Jii asked and the teenager stopped at the question and examined the door, seeing scratches by the lock.  
"Apparently he can pick locks," he snorted and continued to the car that still had its engines running.

* * *

He made his way into the professors house unseen, despite all of the reporters that were sneaking around the gates to Meitantei's house, but he wasn't Kaitou KID for nothing and as soon as he'd gotten inside he went down to the basement where he knew that there was a lab. The detective in his arms made a small noise and moved his head, telling Kaito that he was waking up. He quickly placed the teenager on a spindly bed and tied him up with the only thing he could find in the lab; cable ties, but it would have to do. Kaito couldn't have the detective running around in complete disorientation, believing that he'd killed someone, especially not Kaitou KID.

The thief changed into his KID outfit as he walked up the stairs and then entered the girl's room, seeing her sleep peacefully.  
"Oi, Haibara-chan," he whispered and carefully shook her. The woman in a girl's body groaned and turned her back to him without opening her eyes.  
"Hey, Haibara-chan," he said a bit louder and the girl immediately turned her head to glare at him.  
"What the hell, KID?" she said with a voice hoarse from sleep and cleared her throat.  
"You have a patient in your lab," Kaito informed her and Haibara yawned as she sat up, rubbing her eyes.  
"What's wrong with him? And why are you here?"  
"He hallucinated and broke into my house," Kaito confessed as the child slid off the bed, "he injured himself, talked to the hallucinations and destroyed his phone. I think that you should take a look at him." Haibara hummed as she walked out of her room, followed by the thief in white.

"_Where the hell did you go, you creep?!"_ they heard Shinichi yell as they went down the stairs to the lab, "you can't take my place! They'll know you're not me! _Where the hell are you?!_"  
Haibara yawned as she opened the door and stared at the tied up detective that was struggling against his restraints.  
"You can't just leave me here!" he called out and looked around the room, trying to find some way to get out, but relaxed as he panted and ignored the fact that he'd cut the cable ties into his skin.

"You want me to gas him?" Kaito asked and Haibara shook her head.  
"No, I want to know what he's hallucinating about," she stated and casually walked up to him, "but could you do me the favour of going to his house and getting something better to tie him up with, he'll tear apart his wrists like this." Kaito grimaced as he looked at the wrists of the 'for the moment' calm detective and left.

* * *

Kaito walked along the corridor in the large mansion and frowned as he heard the sound of a running shower, but once he got to the bathroom the door was wide open and the shower empty, and he realised that the detective had left it on. The thief frowned down at the clothes, lying on the floor, covered in something dark red and examined them after he turned the water off. Touching them he felt that the red stuff had hardened and realised that it was ketchup, but the strangest thing was the name that was written on the tag; Kuroba Kaito, which meant that it was the detective that had been following him last night and that Meitantei had broken into his house after he'd fallen asleep, sneaked up to his room, stolen his clothes, covered them in ketchup and then returned to his house a few hours later to see if he really had killed him.

He sighed and made the clothes disappear before he went up to the shower curtain, too tired to search for anything else, and tore it down to shred it into long stripes before he went back, but as he got to the main floor he saw red stains leading into the kitchen and followed them. An empty bottle of ketchup was laid beside a large spot beside the table in the kitchen, which obviously was where the clothes had been drenched in its contents.

"Oh, Meitantei..." Kaito sighed and left the house with the new restraints.

* * *

When he got back to the lab he found the detective sleeping with a mask over his mouth and nose while Haibara was examining something underneath a microscope. A machine stopped spinning and the girl pushed the office chair to it before she opened the machine and pulled out a vial of glass that she then placed in the next machine.  
"Found anything interesting in his house?" Haibara asked as she turned the machine on and got back to looking into the microscope.  
"I found my own clothes, covered in ketchup, and he forgot to turn off the shower," Kaito stated, amazed by the fact that the little girl knew that he was there even though he hadn't made a single sound, "do you know what's wrong with him?"  
"Not yet," Haibara leaned back into the chair and turned it so that she could see him, "I'm still working on it. Tell me about last night's target; the mirror." Kaito raised an eyebrow at the question but still obeyed.

"The mirror has many stories surrounding it, but most of them are misinterpretations of the original."  
"Tell me the original," Haibara demanded and the thief nodded.  
"It's said that after the angel Lucifer got thrown out of heaven for rising up to God he despised all of the others. He and the angels that followed him created the mirror in order to destroy Paradise by slowly making the angels go mad and make them turn on each other. According to the legend Lucifer was God's perfectly created angel and was the embodiment of beauty. He seduced one of the angels true to God and gave her the mirror as a gift to give to God, as an apology for his pride, but the angel took it to her home in paradise; a great temple where a lot of angels gazed into the mirror and after a few days drove them paranoid. A great war broke out among the angels that ended in a bloodbath. Friends turned on friends and families killed each other. Innocent and non-infected ones fled to Eden and then to earth. They hid inside humans, intending to go back to God's side, but some fell asleep and therefore never did. God ended the war and threw the mirror to the earth since humans weren't affected by it. He then abolished Lucifer to hell, together with all his disciples. He made them into beasts and called them demons while Lucifer took the name Satan, determined to get revenge for stripping him of his beauty," Kaito cleared his throat and shrugged, "that's why the mirror is on earth and why good-natured people shouldn't look into it, but I think that the myth began because the mirror brought misfortune and disaster wherever it went."

"Interesting," Haibara muttered, clearly not interested, "did he act strangely last night?"  
"No, not that I saw-," Kaito stopped himself and frowned, "but now that you mention it. He stared into the mirror and then stared into the corner with a frightened look. First he talked like it was me in the corner, but since it was empty I don't know what he saw there. You don't think that he was cursed by the mirror?" Kaito asked worriedly and Haibara deadpanned.  
"Cursed?" she snorted amused, "magic isn't real, my dear Kaitou KID."  
"Tell that to a witch I know," the thief muttered and made the girl laugh.  
"Oh, my... Do you miss your friends at the mental asylum?"  
"Oi!" Kaito called out at her statement.  
"Don't forget to take your pills, Mr. Thief," Haibara smirked at the thief with ruffled feathers and heard how the small alarm from the machine went off and the printer came to life.

"I'm not insane," Kaito sighed and shook his head; it wouldn't be any good if Meitantei had been cursed and he'd have to get Akako to lift it.  
"And the only thing that can awaken the sleeping beauty is a kiss from the prince," Haibara stated seriously as she read the results on the paper and then eyed the thief, making him tense.  
"No way," Kaito took a step back, "you're the one who's keeping him asleep."  
"KID-san, the curse must be broken," Haibara growled and glared at him, "or do you indent to keep him like that."

"If a kiss is what it takes then you should do it!" Kaito called out and sent the detective a glance, "I'm just a thief, not a prince."  
"KID-san, you're the one who can become everyone from a child to a man and a woman; why can't you be a prince?" Haibara's voice was strained, making her sound angry, but she was trying very hard not to laugh as the thief seemed to consider it.  
"I-, I-," Kaito sighed in defeat, "okay..." The girl raised an eyebrow and allowed herself to break down laughing.

"You are so gullible!" she guffawed and made Kaito's cheeks start to burn in embarrassment, "who would've thought that the great Kaitou KID believes in magic and fairy tales!"  
"That's not funny! It's too early in the morning for my brain to function properly and your poker face is horrible! I even believed you!"

"It's not a curse," Haibara stated as she stopped laughing, "it's the cure." The woman in a girl's body sighed and sent the text a glare, as if it would change itself simply because of that.  
"There was a forty percent chance that the cure would kill him, but this is one of the side effects that I didn't think would happen because of the statistics, and that was why I let him go to the heist, but the history of the mirror made his already fragile mind begin to imagine things. So here he is, believing that he's an angel, but I would love to wake him up and show him a picture of you kissing him; that would make my day."  
"You're so mean," Kaito pouted, "but will he be okay?"  
"Yes, yes, he'll be fine in a few days when the cure is washed out of his system, until then he'll be sleeping in here and you can leave those stripes so that I can tie him up better," Haibara smirked evilly, "now if you excuse me KID-san, I have a catheter to take care of." Kaito winced at the thought and then left in a puff of smoke, really not wanting to see it happen. Haibara snorted amused at the thief; he really was a funny guy to mess with, especially when it was so early in the morning.

* * *

To say that Shinichi was a little confused when he woke up in the lab was an understatement; he was certain that he had been held by his doppelganger in an abandoned warehouse, and he became ashamed when he heard parts of the story of what he'd done, which was why he found himself outside the home of Kuroba Kaito once more. Nervously he rang the bell and smiled apologetically when the thief opened.  
"Kudou-chan, why are you here?" KID asked with a grin and made Shinichi blink at the strange use of honorific.  
"Please don't call me that," the detective asked while the thief stepped away to let him enter, "I came to apologise." Shinichi twitched as the door closed behind him; it felt wrong for him to be there, knowing that the infamous Kaitou KID was standing right next to him.  
"No worries!" he laughed, "but you did give me a real scare! Oh, I haven't introduced myself, have I? Kuroba Kaito! Magician Extraordinaire!" the thief bowed and then winked at him, "KID's number one fan, and you can call me Kaito." Shinichi nodded and realised that the thief was protecting his identity even though there were no questions about it being him.  
"I'm Kudou Shinichi, and thank you for helping me. I can't even begin to describe how thankful I am," Shinichi bowed, not caring that it felt like he had to beat his pride with a stick in order to do it, "and I hope that you could tell me what happened here, since I remember blood, but I'm assuming that that never happened."

"Kudou!" a voice called out and Shinichi turned to see a familiar face in the stairs.  
"Hakuba?" he asked shocked and then sent a disbelieving glance to the thief.  
"I had no idea that you associated with the likes of Kuroba," the blonde commented amused and stared at them.  
"Aren't you a pot calling the kettle black?" Shinichi asked with a smirk.  
"I'm only here to accompany Nakamori-chan, work on a school assignment and of course find any evidence lying around."  
"Oh, Sagu-chan, go choke on a teabag!" the thief called out in a happy voice and Shinichi was forced to hide a laugh by coughing, "I've been telling you; I'm not KID!"  
"Yea yea, whatever," the half-Brit muttered and walked down the stairs, "I go to school with the menace, but what are you doing here, Kudou?"  
"I-, eh," Shinichi gave him a hard glare, "that's none of your business."  
"Aiding and abetting a criminal is technically in my business,"  
"Oh, talk for yourself," Shinichi muttered and turned to the thief, "I'm sorry about what happened, and I really want to know the details, but you seem to be busy so I should probably leave."  
"Nope," Kaito grinned, "I'm going to introduce you to Aoko and then tell you my part of the story."

Shinichi was introduced to Nakamori Aoko, a woman looking a lot like Ran, and was impressed by the thief's connections to the police. He was then handed a cup of coffee in the kitchen and told what had happened, while Kaito never even tried to hide that he was KID. For some reason the thief knew that Shinichi wouldn't bring him in and the detective had no plans of doing so.

Before Shinichi had even realised it he had become friends with a thief and ended up spending time together outside of the heists. Hakuba was still hot in Kaito's trail, but Shinichi didn't care if the half-Brit saw him lesser as a detective because of their friendship; the thief was a great guy once you got to know him.


End file.
